From football to basketball to baseball, sports beat writer Nick Baumgardner knew it all.

“I grew up infatuated with sports, and everything surrounding sports,” Baumgardner said. “College, pro, high school — whatever. It was a huge passion of mine.”

As a child, Baumgardner’s favorite subject in school was English.

“Writing was always something that came relatively easy to me,” Baumgardner said. “At some point along the way I just decided to take the two things I enjoyed the most and told myself I’d make a career out of it.”

Combining his two passions seemed natural for Baumgardner as his major influence, his mother, worked in the journalism business.

“My mom worked at a newspaper my whole life, so I was around newspaper-types at a very young age,” Baumgardner said. “At some point, everything sort of clicked — I figured I could do this and be happy and content, or try something else and be miserable.”

Baumgardner’s high school did not have a school newspaper. He went on to Michigan State and entered the journalism program, learning for the first time AP style, basic reporting and the practical parts of the profession.

But for Baumgardner, it was the hands-on experience that he sought out. Almost immediately after leaving for college, he went to a local newspaper in Lansing, Michigan and bargained for a job.

“I basically told them I’d do anything they wanted for little to no money,” Baumgardner said. “I answered phones, rounded up scores, write news briefs, edited pages, helped layout sections, picked up food orders and eventually, I got to cover games. I was there for two years, and it was the most beneficial thing I probably ever did. A lot of people choose to work at their college paper, but being in a professional setting every day really helped me gain an understanding of the business and an appreciation for it as well.“

After working as a sports desk intern in college, Baumgardner’s first job out of school was at a small 30,000-circulation newspaper group in northern Indiana.

“I covered every high school sport imaginable for about six months,” Baumgardner said. “The best part about that job was that there were basically no rules. They hired me because they needed someone, and I took the job because I knew it’d make me better. I made mistakes and learned from them.”

From there, he took his first college beat writing job at a newspaper in Bowling Green, Kentucky covering Western Kentucky University athletics.

“I was covering college football and college basketball for the first time on a day-to-day basis,” Baumgardner said. “That’s where I learned the ins and outs of being a beat writer. How to cover a beat, how to develop sources, how to develop strong news value and understand what’s important to your readers.”

Baumgardner worked there for four years and currently resides in Ann Arbor, covering University of Michigan football and basketball. 

“With today’s 24-hour news cycle, it’s sort of like riding the wave,” Baumgardner said. “You ride whatever news is interesting at that moment, knowing full well that just about everyone will have forgotten about it 12 hours later. It can be grueling, but it’s rewarding as well.”